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A Surprise Source of Life’s Code

The Quanta Podcast

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The Randomness of Earth's Mineral Composition

There are about 15,300 plausible ways to combine naturally occurring elements into unique elements. In a rerun of Earth, they say, at least one-quarter of the planets roughly 5,000 minerals would come out differently. The chance is that another planet has exactly the same set of minerals as Earth is less than one in 10 to the 300th.

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